That guy in here didn't drive 15 hours from NYC to Chicago to see a Grateful Dead cover band.
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live Grateful Dead (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter tommyboy
- Start date
Apple Jack
Footballguy
everybody wants it. many of us have been clamoring for this lineup for literally decades. the last time I camped out for tickets was for trey and kimock with phil at the warfield in 1999. of course we want it. not sure of your point.
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Apple Jack
Footballguy
the surviving members of the gd. my understand is that bill and bob have objections to calling the band the gd and always have and that there are huge financial consequences to it. working understanding among all my deadhead friends is that these shows were not legally billed as grateful dead.
Apple Jack
Footballguy
i'm just commenting on the music good and not as I hear it. sorry. back to saul goodman channel.
Bob Magaw
Footballguy
Understood, seems like more of a semantic/legal/financial distinction.
* It is pretty lame when revival bands go on money grab tours with only one original, non-essential member (think War with only the harmonica player), but clearly that isn't the case here.
* It is pretty lame when revival bands go on money grab tours with only one original, non-essential member (think War with only the harmonica player), but clearly that isn't the case here.
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Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Apple Jack
Footballguy
It's almost summarily all good here. Wildly exceeding where I thought they'd be is understating it. I'm here alone in a hotel room wishing I was with my tour buddies.
Im awestruck by how much work trey put in. His attention to Jerrys nuances while maintaining his own thing is incredible.
Im awestruck by how much work trey put in. His attention to Jerrys nuances while maintaining his own thing is incredible.
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Apple Jack
Footballguy
Stella?
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
#### yeah!
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
US blues encore for sure! duh
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
terrapin, dark star, touch of grey tommorow
So awesome
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
looks like phil was gearing up for one more
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
maybe not
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
wow. just do this every 3-6 months, once a weekend. come on. that was killer
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
WXRT in Chicago replaying the shows every night after they end. Can listen online.
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Willie Neslon
Footballguy
I haven't paid close attention. Have they played any songs twice, including the Santa Clara shows?
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Last edited by a moderator:
Bob Magaw
Footballguy
The classic sci fi novel More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon was a favorite of and inspiration for the band.
http://blog.littlehippie.com/reading-theodore-sturgeon-the-grateful-dead-are-more-than-human/
Could be a yarn (though it has a ring of verisimilitude), but hilarious Keith Moon story from the Rock Scully book.
https://archive.org/post/323652/jerry-and-keith-moon-in-nyc
"We're staying at the Navarro on Central Park south in New York, a hotel the Who have been trying to sell us for years. They own a third of it or something. We've got adjoining rooms. Jerry and I are spending a quiet evening in the global village, working on our hobbies: recreational drugs and watching TV. The eternal, endlessly shape-shifting box. Its nature changes with each new drug. With grass you want to turn the sound off and play records, on acid everything that happens on the set is uncannily calibrated to each fleeting thought. You are TV. With coke, you talk over it, talk back at it, shoot it dead if need be-it's alive!
Tap-tap-tap.
"Did you hear that?" I ask.
"Yeah man, what was that?"
It's...something...outside the window!
The thing about blow is it breeds paranoia. It's contagious! There are enough demons flapping through our bains as it is without some alien entity crouching on our windowsill forty stories up, tap-tap-taping on my casement window. I don't want to engage Garcia's alarm system over nothing, but this is, let's face it, a critical situation. It's one of those dread occasions where you need another human being to tell you you're imagining the whole thing. I know from bitter experience Jerry isn't that guy, nevertheless...
Knap! Knap! Knap!
"Jesus! There it is again."
"Turn the set off, man, so we can hear the damn thing." Good! Jerry's being very sensible about the whole thing.
"It's probably a pigeon," I suggest. "It could be anything."
"It could be anything?"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Holy ####! It must be ####in' huge!"
"Jerry, we're on the forty-first floor!"
Jerry's not taking any chances. He assumes "the shield position" from the high school manual What to Do in Case of a Nuclear Attack, crouching down on his knees under the writing desk.
"You go check it out Rock."
Oh, thanks. And if you see my head getting chewed off by a ####### gigantic mutant mantis be sure to call the front desk and inform them so it doesn't disturb the other guests.
What, me worry? It's a game. It's something the Imp of blow has cooked up in our overscorched brains. It's just going to be some bird with a broken wing or something. And when it sees me-a bug-eyed teeth-grinding human-it's going to be scared out of its wits.
I pull back the curtains with a dramatic flourish. And, there, outside the window I see-fearsome popping eyes! the demented predatory grin! -the fiend itself!
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
That Clockwork Orange orb of a face could only belong to-Keith Moon! The demon drummer of the Who is blithely grimacing back at me from his precarious perch. I pull open the window and let him in.
"Keith, what the hell are you doing out there?"
In a barely recognizable imitation of the Bard he drones: "May I pleeeeeease crawl in your window, baby?"
Because he's so paranoid from doing blow in his room alone all night he's double-bolted his door, forgotten that he's done it, and is too stoned to figure out how to open it. Calling the front desk in this state might arouse unwanted questions and quite logically he decides to inch along the ledge between out connecting rooms.
"Come in and do a few lines, maan," Jerry says sweepingly. The euphoria of relief and surprise in the room is intoxicating.
"Don't mind if I do."
Snoooooort!
"Wot abowt goin' out an' creatin' some, havoc! eh, lads?" The eyes of Moon are like asteroids of Saturn whirring in their own lunar orbits. They're independant entities, a sort of coke-crazed pair of quasi-human agents-an amped up Tweedledee and Tweedledum-and both of them want to go to Studio 54, now!
Jerry generally never wants to go out once we get to New York. He likes to vegitate in his room with the big color TV until showtime. New York is way too much input, it's abrasive and intimidating to Californians-especially Californians as high as we are. But Moon is fearless. He's a force of nature, he's unstoppable! Jerry loves Moon. He has an abiding affection for maniacs, Keruakian roman candles: "The mad ones, the ones who are mad to live...exploding like spiders across the stars," etc.
In the company of Moon, all apprehensions about New York vanish. Hey don't mess with us, we're with the Tasmanian Devil!"
Garcia's suddenly very animated: "Oh, we're going out? Cool! I'll just go get my coat." He leaves.
Moon's wheels are spinning. He wants to go out to that discotheque, Studio 54, but he's forgotten his stash. And he must have the stuff. It's his familar. So he goes out in the hall and uses his key in the door but naturally it won't unlock. All that coke has frozen his memory cells.
Out in the antiseptic hallway with the carpet with the matching deep-pile burgundy borzoi pattern, the Mad Hatter of the Who ponders to himself' "How could this have happened? Hmmmmm, let's see. I'm out of the room but yet it's bolted, you say, from the inside?"
Chief Inspector Moon voice: "One o' them locked-room mysteries is wot it is." He comes back into my room.
"You climbed along the ledge, remember?" I remind him.
"#### yeah! But wot to do, eh? I'm not goin' owt on that bloody precipice again, I can tell you that!"
It's a quandry all right. While I make a few phone calls, Mood disappears into the bedroom. More tapping! This time it sounds like a giant rat caught in the walls and clawing its way out, which, when I go in there to see what's going on, turns out to be pretty close.
There he is, the giant rat of Sumatra, busily gnawing away-urr-urrr-urrr-urrrr-in my clothes closet. There's dust all over my clothing, lumps of the wall all over the floor.
"What the hell you doin' in there?"
"My room's right next door, mate."
"You're goin' through the wall?"
"Wot uvver alternatives do you recommend?"
"Jesus, Moon, it's only drugs!"
"You should hear yourself, Scully."
"Can't we get more of whatever it is, man? I mean it's not ibogaine, is it? Or extract of Madagascar tree toad venom?"
He doesn't hear me. He's a man possessed. He's stripping the plaster off the wall with a buck knife. He's got that mad Jack-Nicholson-with-the-ax look-here's Johnny! He's a miracle of enthusiasm. Now he's got the plaster off and he's down to the lathe and bricks.
"Won't be a moment," he says and splits. Am I being too optimistic to think he's abandoned the project? Gone to raid Pete Townsend's stash, most probably? But no, it's too good to be true. He goes downstairs to the basement and comes back up with a chisel and a hammer. He's taking the bricks out one by one.
"I own a third of this hotel, y'know,' he says by way of explanation. He's going, "God, I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this!" But he doesn't care, he's pounding away at it! He's determined to get back into his room and get his drugs.
Jerry comes back and goes in to take a look. He's standing there looking at this devastation. "What? Jesus! Moon's turned into some kind of human mole!'
Finally the hole is big enough. Moon wriggles through it, gets his stash and crawls back through the hole, once again forgetting to open his door. He's now covered with dust from head to toe, like a ghoul recently exumed from from a graveyard."
Rock Scully
http://blog.littlehippie.com/reading-theodore-sturgeon-the-grateful-dead-are-more-than-human/
Could be a yarn (though it has a ring of verisimilitude), but hilarious Keith Moon story from the Rock Scully book.
https://archive.org/post/323652/jerry-and-keith-moon-in-nyc
"We're staying at the Navarro on Central Park south in New York, a hotel the Who have been trying to sell us for years. They own a third of it or something. We've got adjoining rooms. Jerry and I are spending a quiet evening in the global village, working on our hobbies: recreational drugs and watching TV. The eternal, endlessly shape-shifting box. Its nature changes with each new drug. With grass you want to turn the sound off and play records, on acid everything that happens on the set is uncannily calibrated to each fleeting thought. You are TV. With coke, you talk over it, talk back at it, shoot it dead if need be-it's alive!
Tap-tap-tap.
"Did you hear that?" I ask.
"Yeah man, what was that?"
It's...something...outside the window!
The thing about blow is it breeds paranoia. It's contagious! There are enough demons flapping through our bains as it is without some alien entity crouching on our windowsill forty stories up, tap-tap-taping on my casement window. I don't want to engage Garcia's alarm system over nothing, but this is, let's face it, a critical situation. It's one of those dread occasions where you need another human being to tell you you're imagining the whole thing. I know from bitter experience Jerry isn't that guy, nevertheless...
Knap! Knap! Knap!
"Jesus! There it is again."
"Turn the set off, man, so we can hear the damn thing." Good! Jerry's being very sensible about the whole thing.
"It's probably a pigeon," I suggest. "It could be anything."
"It could be anything?"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Holy ####! It must be ####in' huge!"
"Jerry, we're on the forty-first floor!"
Jerry's not taking any chances. He assumes "the shield position" from the high school manual What to Do in Case of a Nuclear Attack, crouching down on his knees under the writing desk.
"You go check it out Rock."
Oh, thanks. And if you see my head getting chewed off by a ####### gigantic mutant mantis be sure to call the front desk and inform them so it doesn't disturb the other guests.
What, me worry? It's a game. It's something the Imp of blow has cooked up in our overscorched brains. It's just going to be some bird with a broken wing or something. And when it sees me-a bug-eyed teeth-grinding human-it's going to be scared out of its wits.
I pull back the curtains with a dramatic flourish. And, there, outside the window I see-fearsome popping eyes! the demented predatory grin! -the fiend itself!
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
That Clockwork Orange orb of a face could only belong to-Keith Moon! The demon drummer of the Who is blithely grimacing back at me from his precarious perch. I pull open the window and let him in.
"Keith, what the hell are you doing out there?"
In a barely recognizable imitation of the Bard he drones: "May I pleeeeeease crawl in your window, baby?"
Because he's so paranoid from doing blow in his room alone all night he's double-bolted his door, forgotten that he's done it, and is too stoned to figure out how to open it. Calling the front desk in this state might arouse unwanted questions and quite logically he decides to inch along the ledge between out connecting rooms.
"Come in and do a few lines, maan," Jerry says sweepingly. The euphoria of relief and surprise in the room is intoxicating.
"Don't mind if I do."
Snoooooort!
"Wot abowt goin' out an' creatin' some, havoc! eh, lads?" The eyes of Moon are like asteroids of Saturn whirring in their own lunar orbits. They're independant entities, a sort of coke-crazed pair of quasi-human agents-an amped up Tweedledee and Tweedledum-and both of them want to go to Studio 54, now!
Jerry generally never wants to go out once we get to New York. He likes to vegitate in his room with the big color TV until showtime. New York is way too much input, it's abrasive and intimidating to Californians-especially Californians as high as we are. But Moon is fearless. He's a force of nature, he's unstoppable! Jerry loves Moon. He has an abiding affection for maniacs, Keruakian roman candles: "The mad ones, the ones who are mad to live...exploding like spiders across the stars," etc.
In the company of Moon, all apprehensions about New York vanish. Hey don't mess with us, we're with the Tasmanian Devil!"
Garcia's suddenly very animated: "Oh, we're going out? Cool! I'll just go get my coat." He leaves.
Moon's wheels are spinning. He wants to go out to that discotheque, Studio 54, but he's forgotten his stash. And he must have the stuff. It's his familar. So he goes out in the hall and uses his key in the door but naturally it won't unlock. All that coke has frozen his memory cells.
Out in the antiseptic hallway with the carpet with the matching deep-pile burgundy borzoi pattern, the Mad Hatter of the Who ponders to himself' "How could this have happened? Hmmmmm, let's see. I'm out of the room but yet it's bolted, you say, from the inside?"
Chief Inspector Moon voice: "One o' them locked-room mysteries is wot it is." He comes back into my room.
"You climbed along the ledge, remember?" I remind him.
"#### yeah! But wot to do, eh? I'm not goin' owt on that bloody precipice again, I can tell you that!"
It's a quandry all right. While I make a few phone calls, Mood disappears into the bedroom. More tapping! This time it sounds like a giant rat caught in the walls and clawing its way out, which, when I go in there to see what's going on, turns out to be pretty close.
There he is, the giant rat of Sumatra, busily gnawing away-urr-urrr-urrr-urrrr-in my clothes closet. There's dust all over my clothing, lumps of the wall all over the floor.
"What the hell you doin' in there?"
"My room's right next door, mate."
"You're goin' through the wall?"
"Wot uvver alternatives do you recommend?"
"Jesus, Moon, it's only drugs!"
"You should hear yourself, Scully."
"Can't we get more of whatever it is, man? I mean it's not ibogaine, is it? Or extract of Madagascar tree toad venom?"
He doesn't hear me. He's a man possessed. He's stripping the plaster off the wall with a buck knife. He's got that mad Jack-Nicholson-with-the-ax look-here's Johnny! He's a miracle of enthusiasm. Now he's got the plaster off and he's down to the lathe and bricks.
"Won't be a moment," he says and splits. Am I being too optimistic to think he's abandoned the project? Gone to raid Pete Townsend's stash, most probably? But no, it's too good to be true. He goes downstairs to the basement and comes back up with a chisel and a hammer. He's taking the bricks out one by one.
"I own a third of this hotel, y'know,' he says by way of explanation. He's going, "God, I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this!" But he doesn't care, he's pounding away at it! He's determined to get back into his room and get his drugs.
Jerry comes back and goes in to take a look. He's standing there looking at this devastation. "What? Jesus! Moon's turned into some kind of human mole!'
Finally the hole is big enough. Moon wriggles through it, gets his stash and crawls back through the hole, once again forgetting to open his door. He's now covered with dust from head to toe, like a ghoul recently exumed from from a graveyard."
Rock Scully
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Willie Neslon
Footballguy
cumberland about to start on the phishfiend stream
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Apple Jack
Footballguy
Come in tripper!
Where did you sleep? How were the balloons? Did you fall in deep with any crazies?
Where did you sleep? How were the balloons? Did you fall in deep with any crazies?
PIK95
Footballguy
Maybe he is going to TONIGHT'S show. Someone P.M. me if they have a D.l. of last night. Willie scared me away and I stopped listening after Golden Road. Tia.
Apple Jack
Footballguy
Yeah weir's vocals on Stella were tough. How do you blow the make em shine line? Again, he really struggles delivering many of jerry's songs vocally. But treys solo made that all irrelevant. Left me stunned. That is my favorite song by anybody ever and he brought that ####er home. His entry into the solo was devastating.
Smack Tripper
Footballguy
Will update in a bit... Recovery mode. Will start simply by saying it exceeded high expectations as an experience.
pantherclub
Footballguy
I am going to forever regret not biting the bullet and going. Last nights set list and performance was crazy good. Although the Stella was cringe worthy. West la was awesome.
Apple Jack
Footballguy
Stella was the most potent moment of the shows so far, imo. Bob blew the vocals but Stella has always ultimately come down to the instrumental passages. There were salty old deadheads in tears over that moment last night. Trey clearly knew the gravity of it and absolutely nailed it. No easy chore.
Apple Jack
Footballguy
Tripper you old sailor! Get back on that horse for one last go around. This is it man. The end of the line. Last call.
Bob Magaw
Footballguy
Grateful Dead's Goodbye, Night One: Classics and Curveballs in Chicago
For the first of three Fare Thee Well shows, the band goes deep
By Will Hermes July 4, 2015
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/grateful-deads-goodbye-night-one-classics-and-curveballs-in-chicago-20150704
They came from the East, the West, the North and the South Side, pilgrims all: the stoned and the rehabbed, wistful greybeards and start-up dreamers, pungent trustafarians and parking-lot strivers, CEOs and short-sellers, doctors and lawyers, dealers and hustlers and Teva-strapped miracle-seekers, jackasses and zen masters, cowboys and card sharks, bros and flower children, lovers, BFFs, clients and drug buddies — thousands blanketing the provisional Mecca of Chicago with roses, tie-dyes, grinning vibes and kind-bud vapor. Not to bury the Dead but to praise them, pay proper respects and party our asses off.
And so we did. Last night was the first show of the group's three-night Fare Thee Well run, billed as the last shows the surviving Grateful Dead members will play as a group. It was beautifully executed under a waning gibbous moon, on a cool summer evening, with a soft breeze coming in off Lake Michigan. About 70,000 people danced and sang through the night, packing one-hitters, drinking, hugging and welling up.
Sure, "the Grateful Dead" is a qualified moniker, and has been ever since quicksilver lead guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and spiritual adviser Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995. Strictly speaking, the band ended that day. But the songs and the scene remained, vital and viral. Younger bands bloomed in the Dead's image, good, bad and meh, spinning variations. So did the surviving members, almost from the get-go, in various configurations. All of it — these final three gigs included — could only be tributes. Is it what Jerry would've wanted? #### knows. But Garcia would be the first to tell you: This thing blew up bigger than anyone would've dreamed, one afternoon long ago.
The night was a perfectly unpredictable mix of classics and curveballs, opening with "Box of Rain," the American Beauty gem written by Phil Lesh for his dying father; it was the last song the band played together when Garcia was alive, performed on the same spot in Chicago nearly 20 years ago. "Such a long long time to be gone/And a short time to be there" sang Lesh, his voice — utilitarian at best even in his prime — leathery and cracking, fittingly weary, but resolute in its testifying, buoyed by thousands of backing vocalists. "Jack Straw" followed, Lesh and Bob Weir trading vocals, with Phish's Trey Anastasio, Garcia's ringer for the weekend, punctuating the vocals with guitar gilt in a way that the late guitarist never did. Anastasio's guitar took full flight before the last verse, with a burst of silvery machine-gun strafing, at which point you knew: It was on. If the critique of the band's warm-up gigs in Santa Clara was that Anastasio laid back too much, that was not a problem tonight. This was some of the most soulful, sympathetic music he's ever made.
Singing lead on a feisty "Bertha," Anastasio's voice uncannily mirrored early-Seventies Garcia, and he spun beautiful circles through "The Wheel," pinging lead lines off of Bruce Hornsby's piano fills amidst a spray of hammer-ons. Anastasio shone brightest on the mid-Seventies material that dominated the show. On the paired "Scarlet Begonias" and "Fire On The Mountain" — a signature Dead combo — he worked his way up the scales by measured increments while Lesh's bass circled and nipped at his heels. The band performed nearly the entire of 1975's Blues for Allah LP: "The Music Never Stopped," "Crazy Fingers" (its instrumental intro greeted by a sea of jazz hands) and the second-set triple-header of "Help On The Way" into "Slipknot!" into "Franklins Tower," the LP's funky-mystic white-boy jazzbo feints sitting squarely in Anastasio's wheelhouse.
The second set opened surprisingly on "Mason's Children," a Workingman's Dead outtake rarely played even back in the day, a parable about literally digging up a dead father figure. "He'd hardly aged a day/Taught us all we ever knew" croaked Lesh, comrades choogling alongside. "New Potato Caboose" was another deep-crate highlight, about a dark psychedelic vision redeemed by love and music — at core, really, what the band's entire oeuvre is about.
Hornsby, who did time with the band in Nineties, once again shored up ragged vocal harmonies with his bright tenor, and deepened the improv weave with elegant piano comps. On the Seventies material, he was a one-man Keith and Donna Godchaux, the husband-and-wife team who logged miles with the band during that era. Journeyman keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, for his part, added muscular organ and occasional sci-fi electronics, bringing squishy synths to an unraveled section of "Playing in the Band."
On thousands of hours of bootlegs, and often live, the abstract second-set excursion known as "Drums/Space" is a snooze. But last night, with walls of bass bins and ####-tons of amplifier power, it was enveloping, even profound. Mickey Hart drew a pattern on kalimba, tag-teaming with co-worker Bill Kreutzman on massive taiko-style drums, and unleashing drones and loops and sonic booms with a variety of tools. They including the custom string instrument known as "the beam," a huge steel guitar, strung with piano wire, alternately played with hands and a bow. (Its appearance dates back to the Seventies, part of a percussion arsenal created when Hart and Kreutzman were asked to provide a soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now.) It was possible to hear scores of 21st-century electronic beat composers contained in the maelstrom.
Or maybe it was just the drugs. In fact, the sort of excess that brought down the Dead scene during the tail end of the fraught Eighties/Nineties stretch — prolific barfing, blackouts, fans crawling around on their hands and knees — was thankfully not in evidence. Maybe the steep ticket prices dictated a crowd of folks who could keep their #### somewhat together. Or perhaps some of us, along with getting older, had grown a tiny bit wiser.
Thoughts like this came easily watching this group of old musicians, who have somehow survived where many of their fellow travellers haven't. And the words they sang, having served as gospel and tattoos for so many, informed it, too. These were songs about dogged endurance, about staying the course and staying true to whatever reality you pledge allegiance to, and of course, having been born of the Sixties, about the redemptive power of love. "Without love in the dream, insanity's king" sang Anastasio in "Help On The Way," popping out glistening notes like Ben Wa balls from the black hole of the cosmos. And when Phil Lesh stepped to the mic before the sublime encore of "Ripple" — during which roughly 70,000 voices incanted "let there be songs to fill the air" into the night sky — the bassist got a little choked up talking about "the love we have for each other," meaning the musicians and the fans.
"Thank you for being here for us," he concluded. And all these pilgrims, who have collectively logged so many miles with this music and this band — and plenty of whom will be back in Soldier Field tomorrow and Sunday, too — cheered as if to say: No worries. The pleasure was ours.
Set List
Set 1:
"Box Of Rain"
"Jack Straw"
"Bertha"
"Passenger"
"The Wheel" > "Crazy Fingers"
"The Music Never Stopped"
Set 2:
"Mason's Children"
"Scarlet Begonias" > "Fire On The Mountain"
"Drums" > "Space" > "New Potato Caboose" > "Playing in the Band" > "Let It Grow" > "Help On The Way" > "Slipknot!" > "Franklin's Tower"
Encore:
"Ripple"
For the first of three Fare Thee Well shows, the band goes deep
By Will Hermes July 4, 2015
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/grateful-deads-goodbye-night-one-classics-and-curveballs-in-chicago-20150704
They came from the East, the West, the North and the South Side, pilgrims all: the stoned and the rehabbed, wistful greybeards and start-up dreamers, pungent trustafarians and parking-lot strivers, CEOs and short-sellers, doctors and lawyers, dealers and hustlers and Teva-strapped miracle-seekers, jackasses and zen masters, cowboys and card sharks, bros and flower children, lovers, BFFs, clients and drug buddies — thousands blanketing the provisional Mecca of Chicago with roses, tie-dyes, grinning vibes and kind-bud vapor. Not to bury the Dead but to praise them, pay proper respects and party our asses off.
And so we did. Last night was the first show of the group's three-night Fare Thee Well run, billed as the last shows the surviving Grateful Dead members will play as a group. It was beautifully executed under a waning gibbous moon, on a cool summer evening, with a soft breeze coming in off Lake Michigan. About 70,000 people danced and sang through the night, packing one-hitters, drinking, hugging and welling up.
Sure, "the Grateful Dead" is a qualified moniker, and has been ever since quicksilver lead guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and spiritual adviser Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995. Strictly speaking, the band ended that day. But the songs and the scene remained, vital and viral. Younger bands bloomed in the Dead's image, good, bad and meh, spinning variations. So did the surviving members, almost from the get-go, in various configurations. All of it — these final three gigs included — could only be tributes. Is it what Jerry would've wanted? #### knows. But Garcia would be the first to tell you: This thing blew up bigger than anyone would've dreamed, one afternoon long ago.
The night was a perfectly unpredictable mix of classics and curveballs, opening with "Box of Rain," the American Beauty gem written by Phil Lesh for his dying father; it was the last song the band played together when Garcia was alive, performed on the same spot in Chicago nearly 20 years ago. "Such a long long time to be gone/And a short time to be there" sang Lesh, his voice — utilitarian at best even in his prime — leathery and cracking, fittingly weary, but resolute in its testifying, buoyed by thousands of backing vocalists. "Jack Straw" followed, Lesh and Bob Weir trading vocals, with Phish's Trey Anastasio, Garcia's ringer for the weekend, punctuating the vocals with guitar gilt in a way that the late guitarist never did. Anastasio's guitar took full flight before the last verse, with a burst of silvery machine-gun strafing, at which point you knew: It was on. If the critique of the band's warm-up gigs in Santa Clara was that Anastasio laid back too much, that was not a problem tonight. This was some of the most soulful, sympathetic music he's ever made.
Singing lead on a feisty "Bertha," Anastasio's voice uncannily mirrored early-Seventies Garcia, and he spun beautiful circles through "The Wheel," pinging lead lines off of Bruce Hornsby's piano fills amidst a spray of hammer-ons. Anastasio shone brightest on the mid-Seventies material that dominated the show. On the paired "Scarlet Begonias" and "Fire On The Mountain" — a signature Dead combo — he worked his way up the scales by measured increments while Lesh's bass circled and nipped at his heels. The band performed nearly the entire of 1975's Blues for Allah LP: "The Music Never Stopped," "Crazy Fingers" (its instrumental intro greeted by a sea of jazz hands) and the second-set triple-header of "Help On The Way" into "Slipknot!" into "Franklins Tower," the LP's funky-mystic white-boy jazzbo feints sitting squarely in Anastasio's wheelhouse.
The second set opened surprisingly on "Mason's Children," a Workingman's Dead outtake rarely played even back in the day, a parable about literally digging up a dead father figure. "He'd hardly aged a day/Taught us all we ever knew" croaked Lesh, comrades choogling alongside. "New Potato Caboose" was another deep-crate highlight, about a dark psychedelic vision redeemed by love and music — at core, really, what the band's entire oeuvre is about.
Hornsby, who did time with the band in Nineties, once again shored up ragged vocal harmonies with his bright tenor, and deepened the improv weave with elegant piano comps. On the Seventies material, he was a one-man Keith and Donna Godchaux, the husband-and-wife team who logged miles with the band during that era. Journeyman keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, for his part, added muscular organ and occasional sci-fi electronics, bringing squishy synths to an unraveled section of "Playing in the Band."
On thousands of hours of bootlegs, and often live, the abstract second-set excursion known as "Drums/Space" is a snooze. But last night, with walls of bass bins and ####-tons of amplifier power, it was enveloping, even profound. Mickey Hart drew a pattern on kalimba, tag-teaming with co-worker Bill Kreutzman on massive taiko-style drums, and unleashing drones and loops and sonic booms with a variety of tools. They including the custom string instrument known as "the beam," a huge steel guitar, strung with piano wire, alternately played with hands and a bow. (Its appearance dates back to the Seventies, part of a percussion arsenal created when Hart and Kreutzman were asked to provide a soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now.) It was possible to hear scores of 21st-century electronic beat composers contained in the maelstrom.
Or maybe it was just the drugs. In fact, the sort of excess that brought down the Dead scene during the tail end of the fraught Eighties/Nineties stretch — prolific barfing, blackouts, fans crawling around on their hands and knees — was thankfully not in evidence. Maybe the steep ticket prices dictated a crowd of folks who could keep their #### somewhat together. Or perhaps some of us, along with getting older, had grown a tiny bit wiser.
Thoughts like this came easily watching this group of old musicians, who have somehow survived where many of their fellow travellers haven't. And the words they sang, having served as gospel and tattoos for so many, informed it, too. These were songs about dogged endurance, about staying the course and staying true to whatever reality you pledge allegiance to, and of course, having been born of the Sixties, about the redemptive power of love. "Without love in the dream, insanity's king" sang Anastasio in "Help On The Way," popping out glistening notes like Ben Wa balls from the black hole of the cosmos. And when Phil Lesh stepped to the mic before the sublime encore of "Ripple" — during which roughly 70,000 voices incanted "let there be songs to fill the air" into the night sky — the bassist got a little choked up talking about "the love we have for each other," meaning the musicians and the fans.
"Thank you for being here for us," he concluded. And all these pilgrims, who have collectively logged so many miles with this music and this band — and plenty of whom will be back in Soldier Field tomorrow and Sunday, too — cheered as if to say: No worries. The pleasure was ours.
Set List
Set 1:
"Box Of Rain"
"Jack Straw"
"Bertha"
"Passenger"
"The Wheel" > "Crazy Fingers"
"The Music Never Stopped"
Set 2:
"Mason's Children"
"Scarlet Begonias" > "Fire On The Mountain"
"Drums" > "Space" > "New Potato Caboose" > "Playing in the Band" > "Let It Grow" > "Help On The Way" > "Slipknot!" > "Franklin's Tower"
Encore:
"Ripple"
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Bob Magaw
Footballguy
Bob Magaw
Footballguy
The Friday show available for replay if anybody missed Willie's link a few pages ago.
I stopped listening early due to lack of a video feed. Big mistake. Missed the set two-ending Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Franklin's Tower medley.
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Apple Jack
Footballguy
Guessing they killed it in rehearsals in order for it to have been saved for the last show. Three sets wouldn't surprise me tonight.
Bob Magaw
Footballguy
GD in Egypt (two parts) VIDEO nearly 2 hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5-UuXLQ7YY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXGcvmsJY3U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5-UuXLQ7YY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXGcvmsJY3U
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